Sovereign AI is a tagline used to describe efforts by different nations to establish their own AI supercomputers, entirely within their countries, to allow them to develop their own artificial intelligence capabilities without depending on foreign (US-based) cloud service providers.
Here are a few key sovereign AI efforts:
Notably, there is no US sovereign AI effort because all AI effort is US-sovereign by default.
I’ve noticed that the biggest sovereign AI efforts are being run much more like national HPC efforts than true AI infrastructure projects. They are commonly attached to traditional HPC organizations (universities) and have procured AI systems from traditional HPC vendors (Cray, Eviden) building traditional HPC system platforms (Cray EX, BullSequana XH3000) rather than systems optimal for AI (see differences between AI and HPC). This leads me to believe that “sovereign AI” is really masquerading as “HPC that can technically be used for AI as well.”